Ray N. Howell III: Blessed beyond measure

Friday

Jan 26, 2018 at 2:00 PM

Ray N. Howell III

Through the years, I have been blessed to receive many more honors and awards than I deserve. Each one has been special and I have always been humbled and grateful. But two weeks ago, I received one of the greatest honors of my life when I was asked to speak at the annual NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet. The NAACP went “outside the box” as President Elder Gloria Cross stated by asking a white person to speak. That in itself was humbling, but the greatest blessing was experiencing the power of love, acceptance, and equality that permeated the packed YMCA Banquet Hall on this memorable night.

I have tried to be an advocate for racial equality throughout my ministry. But I have always realized that while I can sympathize with minorities and people of color who continue to experience discrimination and oppression, I cannot truly empathize with them, because I am a white man. I cannot know what it is like to be black.

I grew up in a nice brick house on Main Street, a street two of my best friends were not allowed to walk on because it wasn’t “proper” in our little Alabama town. My two friends lived on the other side of a path that cut through some bushes on the backside of our property. The bushes served as a dividing line between the white side of town and the black. At the banquet I shared what it was like to grow up “on the other side of the path.”

I recalled how scared I was as an 8-year old boy who witnessed people filled with anger and hatred being worked into a frenzy by George Wallace with his venomous and vitriolic rants on segregation. I told about a store owner who grabbed me and shook me, demanding to know what I was doing with two black boys, my two good friends who lived on the other side of the path. I remember sitting in a barber’s chair while the barber bragged about carrying a gun to church to keep the blacks out. And then there was the school principal.

In an effort to circumvent the federal mandate on integration, the state offered what they called “freedom of choice” to students. Ostensibly, the student could decide where he or she wanted to go to school. I decided I wanted to attend the “Training School” on the other side of the path. My friends went there and it was a short walk from the path behind my house. I confessed I failed to tell my mother about this and when I came home from school that day she was shaken, but not from my wish to attend the black school. The principal had called her up and chewed her out, asking if she had lost her everlasting mind wanting to send her son to a ---- school!

I shared these experiences and more that night at the banquet. I concluded by telling about standing at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., one morning. As I reflected on the 58,000 names in front of me, my first thought was “but by the grace of God.” Yes, my name could have easily been on that wall if I had not gone to college. But then it hit me that it wasn’t just the grace of God that spared me; it was because I lived on the other side of the path. My family could afford to send me to college which deferred my being drafted. When I finished college the draft had ended and the war was winding down.

But my friend James, who lived on the other side of the path — he could not afford college. He went to Vietnam. His name is on the wall.

I shared these life experiences from deep within my heart. As I did, an amazing thing happened. I don’t know that I have ever felt such a dynamic connection with an audience. As I was speaking from the raw pain of my experience, people were responding from the raw pain of theirs. The atmosphere was electric and powerful as God’s Spirit descended with love and grace and God’s people were lifted up with hearts of healing and redemption.

I was truly blessed beyond measure!

The Rev. Dr. Ray Howell III is senior minister at First Baptist Church on West Third Avenue.

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